How much power consumption audio recording?

[AisyJeff]

Hye there, how can I know how much power spresense uses for 16-channel audio recording, (I uses 8 stereo mems microphone).

[Tobias Johansson]

Hi @aisyjeff!

Unfortunately we don't have any numbers for that specific use case.

There are two basic ways you can measure it:

• When powering the board using USB, you can use some specific USB power measurement gadget (there are lots on Amazon etc)
• When powered through the battery connector you could use a multimeter or some other power supply/measurement tool

Maybe this tutorial could be helpful. It is for Arduino but the principle should be the same.

Optimally you'd want some kind of logger so you can control exactly what/when to measure and calculate some kind of average consumption while doing the recording. In our power saving tutorial for example, we used an Ooti device, which is a very convenient but somewhat pricey tool for these kinds of things (https://www.qoitech.com/otii/).

[AisyJeff]

@tobias-johansson Thanks so much for the suggestions!
I will try measuring it using a simple multimeter I suppose for the power measurements!
Usually, is it possible for the recording to last for lets say a week with (12 hour recording time each day), using a 10,000mAh power-source?

Thanks!

[Tobias Johansson]

@aisyjeff Difficult to say, I don't have any numbers and it depends on what microphones you're using, what you recording to sleep ratio is etc. Either way, if you intend to record continuously for 12 hours it will use quite a bit.